Ranked choice voting works

In his Dec. 5 column, Matthew Gagnon makes a flawed argument against ranked choice voting. He claims that with ranked choice voting we cannot evaluate the top two candidates for round two of against one another because we do not know in advance who they will be. However, with ranked-choice voting, we have effectively evaluated the top two against one another for a possible second round, no matter who they are, precisely because we’ve already evaluated and ranked all the candidates, including the final top two, in round one.

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To the Editor;
In his Dec. 5 column, Matthew Gagnon makes a flawed argument against ranked choice voting. He claims that with ranked choice voting we cannot evaluate the top two candidates for round two of against one another because we do not know in advance who they will be. However, with ranked-choice voting, we have effectively evaluated the top two against one another for a possible second round, no matter who they are, precisely because we’ve already evaluated and ranked all the candidates, including the final top two, in round one.

In the Maine 2nd Congressional District election, we had four candidates. No matter who the top two would be after ranked-choice voting round one, it would have to be two of the four we had already evaluated before the election, presumably well enough to know who we prefer represent us in Congress.

In a “true runoff” election, there is little reason to believe we would change our order of preference, even if our third and fourth choices in the first election were the top two for the runoff election.

Ranked choice voting was twice approved by a large majority of Maine voters. The results of its first use in an election should stand.

Joel Holcomb
Brewer

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